May Your Eyes Be Blessed: Film and TV Work of Luiz Fernando Carvalho

Programmed by Madeleine Molyneaux & Carlos Valladares

Luiz Fernando Carvalho is among the most inventive visual stylists in Brazilian film and television, yet his poetic, unruly oeuvre remains largely unknown in the US. Inspired by the examples of Glauber Rocha, Marguerite Duras, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Luchino Visconti, Carvalho has brought a bold, “contaminated” sensibility to feverish adaptations of texts by Machado de Assis, Ariano Suassuna, Graciliano Ramos, and especially Clarice Lispector, while also reinterpreting Brazil’s history, myths, and emotional and political landscapes. This series includes the North American premiere of The Passion According to G.H., Carvalho’s award-winning treatment of Lispector’s supposedly “unfilmable” 1964 novel, plus his landmark first feature film, To the Left of the Father (Lavoura Arcaica), and more celebrated work in cinema and television. Also screening are films personally selected by Carvalho that have fired his imagination. This overdue retrospective introduces New York audiences to a filmmaker hailed by Bernardo Bertolucci as “master of himself and of us all.”

Luiz Fernando Carvalho and actress Maria Fernanda Cândido will be present for select events.